Fraudulent use of mobile communication devices costs the industry millions of pounds each year. A particular problem is fraudulent users setting up subscriber accounts in the names of individuals whose identity they have cloned, for example by gaining access to bank details or other confidential or personal information.
One example of fraudulent use is fraudulent subscribers taking out a contract with a mobile network provider under the identity of an unsuspecting third party. Any charges incurred by that fraudulent user, typically, have to be written off by the network. This is particularly expensive for networks when the fraudulent user has incurred large bills either by using heavy talk time or by calling premium rate numbers.
Known fraud detection systems attempt to combat such fraudulent activities by flagging accounts in which talk time or use of premium rate numbers is excessive. While such techniques can identify fraudulent users, many of the subscribers flagged, and hence investigated, are legitimate users. Therefore, such investigations are not always an efficient use of fraud analyst's resources.
Many fraudulent users do not use their accounts for incurring high charges and so are not detected by fraud detection systems which monitor for high usage or expensive calls. Such users may be regular fraudulent users and may be involved with other types of fraudulent activity. Therefore, fraud detection systems should be able to detect fraudulent users who do not show the trends of high volume or expensive usage.